Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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! The Hesitancy To Become Involved /(2:14)/
An 18-year-old girl was stripped and sexually abused by a gang of youths in a theater aisle during a rock concert, but hundreds of people in the audience ignored her pleas for help, police said.
A 17-year-old girlfriend of the victim said she begged a security guard at the International Amphitheater on the city's South Side for help, but he refused and went back to listening to music.
"They were just like animals.
Everybody was smoking marijuana," she told the Chicago Tribune.
"It's like when you have three dogs and put one piece of meat there and they all went after it."
About two dozen youths were involved in the attack early Wednesday on the woman and her two companions, who were also beaten and robbed.
Police said the 18-year-old victim was stripped naked, robbed of jewelry, beaten and abused sexually as other concert-goers in the theater looked on.
The soul music band on stage continued playing as the woman was assaulted.
"Nobody did anything," the 17-year-old girl said.
The victim was reported in fair condition after surgery at Mercy Hospital.
The attack came about 90 minutes after a couple from Gary, IN, were beaten and robbed by about a dozen youths at the Rhythm and Blues Holiday Jam II concert.
Four groups, Chocolate Milk, Sky, Roger Slade and Michael Henderson were on the bill.
Sgt.
William Mikolitis said nine people were arrested on weapons and disorderly conduct charges at the concert, but no one was charged with the robberies or the sexual assault.
We hear these kinds of stories too many times and most of us are appalled that no one would step in and help.
Too many times the church holds the same posture relative to it’s community and the needs represented there.
*/We just don’t want to get involved./*
*/ /*
Most professing Christians, from the liberals to the fundamentalists, remain practical atheists.
They think the church is sustained by the services it provides or the amount of fellowship and good feeling in the congregation.
This form of sentimentality has become the most detrimental corruption of the church and the ministry.
n Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon in the Christian Century (March 15, 1989).
Christianity Today, Vol.
33, no. 15.
*/ /*
It is relative to this posture that James challenges the person who does not act on his beliefs.
He makes no bones about the dead faith that this represents.
He asks the questions:
q What good is it?
Snow blower Illustration.
It’ll blow like crazy – it just won’t go and as far as it’s worth as a snowblower – nil.
Many Christians are like that as well.
We’ll blow like crazy but we won’t budge.
Some Christians are so afraid of failure that they become reserved, overly cautious, and uninvolved in life.
They follow a policy of guarded living, holding back time, talents, and treasure from God's service.
Their motto is: To keep from failing -- don't try! On the other hand, those who are willing to make mistakes and risk failure are the ones who ultimately achieve great things.
Instead of being filled with fear, they go forward in faith.
Problems are challenges.
While they may not all be solved, these courageous people would rather live with that reality than have a clean record of no failures and no accomplishments.
Benjamin Franklin said one time, "The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all -- doing nothing."
q Can it save?
It would be a good thing to find that out before we step over the precipice of eternity.
A rope is tested and sold according to the weight that it will bear.
Somehow we ought to test the sufficiency of our faith here in this world.
How do we do it – we subject it to weight and other conditions under which it might snap.
One of the greatest things that a person could discover in this life is that their faith is not sufficient.
It is the process of stepping out to confront our fears.
(Jean Jones has rappelled.)
!
The Hurdles To Be Overcome /(2:15-19)/
Perhaps many folk are hesitant to step in not so much for the situation at hand but for what may follow.
What does the Good Samaritan do when he gets the guy out of the ditch?
Then it is God’s job to get the ditch out of the guy.
James presents two common arguments that are alive and well today relative to faith and works.
q Do Be Do Be Do.
Is it true that it is more important to be what I need to be or to do what I need to do?
According to James the answer is “yes”.
It’s never an “either or” but a “both and”
While serving with Operation Mobilization in India in 1967, tuberculosis forced me into a sanitarium for several months.
I did not yet speak the language, but I tried to give Christian literature written in their language to the patients, doctors, and nurses.
Everyone politely refused.
I sensed many weren't happy about a rich American (to them all Americans are rich) being in a free, government-run sanitarium.
(They didn't know I was just as broke as they were!)
The first few nights I woke around 2:00 A.M. coughing.
One morning during my coughing spell, I noticed one of the older and sicker patients across the aisle trying to get out of bed.
He would sit up on the edge of the bed and try to stand, but in weakness would fall back into bed.
I didn't understand what he was trying to do.
He finally fell back into bed exhausted.
I heard him crying softly.
The next morning I realized what the man had been trying to do.
He had been trying to get up and walk to the bathroom!
The stench in our ward was awful.
Other patients yelled insults at the man.
Angry nurses moved him roughly from side to side as they cleaned up the mess.
One nurse even slapped him.
The old man curled into a ball and wept.
The next night I again woke up coughing.
I noticed the man across the aisle sit up and again try to stand.
Like the night before, he fell back whimpering.
I don't like bad smells, and I didn't want to become involved, but I got out of bed and went over to him.
When I touched his shoulder, his eyes opened wide with fear.
I smiled, put my arms under him, and picked him up.
He was very light due to old age and advanced TB.
I carried him to the washroom, which was just a filthy, small room with a hole in the floor.
I stood behind him with my arms under his armpits as he took care of himself.
After he finished, I picked him up, and carried him back to his bed.
As I laid him down, he kissed me on the cheek, smiled, and said something I couldn't understand.
The next morning another patient woke me and handed me a steaming cup of tea.
He motioned with his hands that he wanted a tract.
As the sun rose, other patients approached and indicated they also wanted the booklets I had tried to distribute before.
Throughout the day nurses, interns, and doctors asked for literature.
Weeks later an evangelist who spoke the language visited me, and as he talked to others he discovered that several had put their trust in Christ as Savior as a result of reading the literature.
What did it take to reach these people with the gospel?
It wasn't health, the ability to speak their language, or a persuasive talk.
I simply took a trip to the bathroom.
Doug Nichols, Bothell, Washington.
Leadership, Vol. 15, no.
2.
Billy Graham had this to say about faith and works and their relationship to each other:
There really is no conflict between faith and works.
In the Christian life they go together like inhaling and exhaling.
Faith is taking the Gospel in; works is taking the Gospel out.
Actually, what James is saying is: you can't have one without the other.
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